The Ministry of Education plans to upgrade the Test of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TOCFL) by reviewing and improving the database of test questions before launching a new version — TOCFL 2.0 — in 2023.
The TOCFL is a proficiency test for non-native speakers of Chinese that categorizes language proficiency into four bands and eight levels, the ministry said yesterday.
The levels were based on those used in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and those used by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, the ministry said.
Photo courtesy of National Taiwan Normal University
The ministry said that from 2013 to last year, it sought to make Chinese-language education a major export of Taiwan.
The National Academy for Educational Research developed the Taiwan Benchmarks for the Chinese Language, which lay out the Chinese characters, words and grammar points to be mastered at each proficiency level, while the ministry developed a portal that integrated the benchmarks with the Corpus of Contemporary Taiwanese Mandarin, it said.
Building on the corpus, the government-funded Steering Committee for the Test of Proficiency-Huayu is to review the existing database of test questions and improve their quality, it said.
The new version would be learner-centered and expand on the first version’s computerized adaptive testing, immediately assessing test takers and offering them questions that pinpoint their abilities, it added.
The ministry said that it would continue to seek official recognition for the test in other countries, lobby for its use as proof of Chinese-language proficiency for new employment, increase the number of overseas TOCFL centers and encourage test takers who achieve a certain level of proficiency to study in Taiwan.
The ministry’s promotion of Chinese-language education partly relies on Taiwanese teachers who teach Chinese in other countries.
Hung I-chiao (洪亦喬), 31, teaches Chinese at Pennsylvania State University in the US.
In August, Hung — who was working on a doctorate in the Department of Chinese as a Second Language at National Taiwan Normal University, which has a cooperative program with Penn State — volunteered to teach Chinese in the US.
Regular US students and overseas Chinese take Chinese-language classes for at least five hours per week over three semesters, she said.
Many students in the US begin learning Chinese because of movies or comedies, but another strong motivation is career development, as many students have noticed how many Chinese speakers there are around the world, Hung added.
She said that she also promotes the TOCFL, and that many Penn State students have registered for the test this semester.
A relatively large earthquake may strike within the next two weeks, following a magnitude 5.2 temblor that shook Taitung County this morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. An earthquake struck at 8:18am today 10.2km west of Taitung County Hall in Taitung City at a relatively shallow depth of 6.5km, CWA data showed. The largest intensity of 4 was felt in Taitung and Pingtung counties, which received an alert notice, while areas north of Taichung did not feel any shaking, the CWA said. The earthquake was the result of the collision between the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the agency said, adding
Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
HOLIDAY EXERCISE: National forest recreation areas from north to south offer travelers a wide choice of sights to connect with nature and enjoy its benefits Hiking is a good way to improve one’s health, the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency said, as it released a list of national forest recreation areas that travelers can visit during the Lunar New Year holiday. Taking a green shower of phytoncides in the woods could boost one’s immunity system and metabolism, agency Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) cited a Japanese study as saying. For people visiting northern Taiwan, Lin recommended the Dongyanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Taoyuan’s Fusing District (復興). Once an important plantation in the north, Dongyanshan (東眼山) has a number of historic monuments, he said. The area is broadly covered by
RSS